Lachout document
The Lachout document is a forged circular, with which right-wing extremists in Austria tried to support Holocaust denial in 1987 . It was supposed to rule out the use of poison gas in 13 German concentration camps and extermination camps (including Mauthausen , Bergen-Belsen and Groß-Rosen ) with a fictitious letter from an allied officer dated 1948.
History and content
It was from the Austrian administrative officer and religion teacher i. R. Emil Lachout (* 1928) written in German . The letter presents itself as a document of the "Military Police Service" of the "Allied Command" and is dated October 1, 1948. Lachout himself signed as a lieutenant of the "Wachbataillon Wien - Kommando" for the correctness of the copies. The content of the letter consists of two points, the first of which is the “statement” that there were no poison gas killings in the concentration camps listed. The Austrian neo-Nazi newspaper "Halt" published the document for the first time in November 1987. As a result, it was also reprinted by other Austrian and West German right-wing extremist magazines and attracted its author Lachout some attention as a new key witness of revisionism .
The letter and its contents were quickly exposed as a forgery. In terms of content, the murders by poison gas, including in Mauthausen, have long been proven historically and legally. A number of formal defects also point to the clumsy falsification. There was neither an “Allied Command” nor a “Military Police Service”. Since Austria had no armed forces of its own until 1955 , no “Vienna Guard Battalion” could have existed in 1948. Furthermore, the permitted official languages were English , French and Russian - but by no means German. The Allied authorities were also not subject to the Austrian legal system, the "confirmation" stated on the document under Austrian administrative law is therefore absurd. Lachout himself was never a member of the Austrian executive and could not have held the rank of lieutenant in 1948 at the age of 20.
After seven years of investigation, criminal proceedings against Lachout were opened on May 9, 1994 before the Higher Regional Court of Vienna, which were discontinued on June 4, 1996, as Lachout was attested that he was unable to make legally binding statements. A new trial on July 1, 1997 before the Regional Court of Vienna was ultimately broken off due to a psychiatric report, which Lachout declared incapable of negotiation due to his "querulous-paranoid attitude". However, since he had previously successfully delayed the preliminary investigation with submissions and complaints - which reached a volume of around 12,500 pages - over seven years, the court's decision met with criticism and was, among other things, the subject of a parliamentary question to the Austrian Minister of Justice.
literature
- Brigitte Bailer-Galanda , Wilhelm Lasek , Wolfgang Neugebauer , Gustav Spann : The Lachout “Document”. Anatomy of a fake . DÖW , Vienna 1989 (bound facsimile attached to the answer to the inquiry 4930 / AB, XVII. GP. , Unbound facsimile attached to the written question 4280 / J, XVII. GP or the English version of the Nizkor Project [accessed on October 21, 2017]).
- Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Lies, Legends, Prejudices. A dictionary on contemporary history . 12th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-30130-9 , ( dtv 30130).
Individual evidence
- ^ Federal Ministry for Education, Art and Sport: Inquiry response 4930 / AB to 4995 / J, XVII. GP. In: Stenographic Protocol, Appendix. March 22, 1990. Retrieved October 21, 2017 .
- ^ Karl Öllinger and comrades; Justice Minister Nikolaus Michalek: Trial of Emil Lachout (2767 / J, 2805 / AB). Parliamentary question and answer. In: Parlament.gv.at. September 9, 1997. Retrieved October 21, 2017 .